Oley Dibba-Wadda is a social development executive and strategic analyst with over 25 years of leadership and management experience. She is an expert in African and international policies on education, gender equality, and youth development and the Founder, President and CEO of the Gam Africa Institute for Leadership (GAIL). Prior, Oley was the Director of Human Capital, Youth and Skills Development at the African Development Bank where she led five portfolios: Education and skills Development; Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship; Public Health Security; Social Protection; and Nutrition under her department. Before joining the African Development Bank, she was the Executive Secretary of the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA), a pan-African institution (hosted by the African Development Bank) in Tunisia and then Abidjan. Oley also worked as the Executive Director of the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) based in Nairobi, Kenya—a Pan African organization for promoting the education of girls across sub-Saharan Africa—as well as the Executive Director of Femmes Africa Solidarité (FAS), an organization working on women, peace, and security in Africa based in Dakar.

Ms. Dibba-Wadda has held several senior management and advisory roles across various international development agencies, including Oxfam Great Britain, the Commonwealth Education Fund, and Concern Universal. Between 2011 and 2013, she chaired the Gender is my Agenda Campaign movement across Africa, and she is the current Chair of the Executive Committee of the Association for the Development of Education in Africa, the current Chair of the Advisory Council of Teach For All Africa, and a Global Ambassador for 10X10 and Concern Universal.

As a certified life coach, over the past 20 years Oley Dibba-Wadda has been providing coaching and mentoring support on emotional life skills to several youths across the African continent. Oley has travelled extensively to over 50+ countries globally and been invited to speak at several international forums as guest and keynote speaker. She is the author of “Memoirs of an African Woman on a Mission.”

In recognition of her exemplary contribution towards human capital development globally, Ms. Dibba-Wadda received the Inspiring Woman of Excellence Award in 2012 and the African Woman Leadership Award in 2013. She was nominated for the 2017 New African Woman in Education Award and the 2020 She Award for Outstanding Woman Writer. In March 2020, Oley Dibba-Wadda was selected amongst the first cohort of 15 African women leaders across Africa for the President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Amujae Initiative, which seeks to inspire and prepare women to take up roles in the highest echelons of public leadership across Africa.